The last thing I want to think about, is the republican President Donald J. Trump having easy access to the nuclear button, but his impulsiveness, his acting out of anger without a second thought as to any consequences, give me an uneasy feeling.

Recent reported developments give me pause:

1.) As per 8/23/17 Washington Post article by Rachel Chason, “James R. Clapper Jr., former national intelligence director, questioned President Trump’s fitness for office following his August 2017 freewheeling speech in Phoenix which Clapper labeled “downright scary and disturbing.”

“I really question his ability to be — his fitness to be — in this office,” Clapper told CNN’s Don Lemon. “I also am beginning to wonder about his motivation for it.”

“In Trump’s remarks, the president threatened to shut down the government over funding for the border wall he promised, opined that the North American Free Trade Agreement will likely be terminated.”

2,) The republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee has earned the respect of his peers to where he had been appointed to key positions, like Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Recently he announced the news that he will not be running for re-election in 2018 which makes him free to speak his mind.

During  a NY Times interview on October 8. 2017, Senator Corker charged that President Trump was treating his office like “a reality show,” with reckless threats toward other countries that could set the nation “on the path to World War III.”

3.)  On the evening of October 5, 2017, at a White House dinner with military leaders, the president made a comment about this being the “calm before the storm with the indication of “more to come.” He’s refused to clarify what he means.

4.) During the 10/8/17 NY Times interview, Senator Bob Corker, who is close to  the Secretary of State, Rex. Tillerson, invoked comments that the president made on Twitter  in which he appeared to undercut Mr. Tillerson’s attempts to create channels of diplomacy to conduct talks with North Korea. The president had tweeted, “Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man. He added, ”Save your energy Rex, we’ll do what has to be done!”

Later the president tweeted: ” Being nice to Rocket Man hasn’t worked in 25 years, why would it work now? Clinton failed, Bush failed, and Obama failed. I won’t fail.”

5.)  After a recent report that Mr. Tillerson had once referred to Mr. Trump as a “moron,” Mr. Corker told reporters that Mr. Tillerson was one of three officials helping to “separate our country from chaos.”

Asked directly by a reporter whether he was referring to Trump in using the word “chaos,” Corker responded: “(Generals Mattis, Kelly and Secretary of State Tillerson) work very well together to make sure the policies we put forth around the world are sound and coherent. I hope they stay because they’re valuable to (US) national security.”

6.) It has been reported  that around October 15, 2017, President Trump plans to declare Iran in violation of the 2015 agreement to limit its nuclear program.  This stance is counter to what the generals and the Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who comprise his national security team are recommending.

During September 2017, President Trump told the Wall Street Journal, “If it was up to me, I would have had them non-compliant 180 days ago.”  Next time (certification of compliance is due on 10/15/17), he added, “I do not expect that they will be compliant.”

7.) After the August 207 Charlottesville, VA where a White supremacists rally turned violent and where the president had been equivocal in his response,  Senator Corker told reporters that the president “has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful.”

Here’s the rest of the story…

On August 28, 2017, David A. Andelman of CNN penned the following opinion piece, How to keep Trump’s thumb off the nuclear button.

“Regardless of who may be in the Oval Office, the stakes are too high, the potential outcome too horrific to leave the arsenal of the nuclear football entirely in the hands of any one president — especially President Donald Trump, who, according to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, asked during the campaign, “If we have them, why can’t we use them?”

“The football was a product of the Kennedy administration when, in the wake of the Bay of Pigs disaster, the President thought it would be useful to have a means to retaliate quickly and efficiently if the United States were ever attacked by a nuclear power. In those days, that meant the Soviet Union. Today, Vladimir Putin is within range of his own football, the “Cheget,” wherever he travels.”

“At his command and fully accessible through the football, President Trump has more than 900 nuclear warheads with the force equivalent of some 17,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs. As Franklin C. Miller, a nuclear specialist who worked for in the Department of Defense for 22 years, told The New York Times last year, “There’s no veto once the President has ordered a strike. The President and only the President has the authority to order the use of nuclear weapons.”

“The solution to having one person with this amount of power, however, is potentially quite near at hand. As Politico reported, White House chief of staff “John Kelly is instituting a system used by previous administrations to limit internal competition — and to make himself the last word on the material that crosses the President’s desk.”

“Specifically, White House staff secretary Rob Porter “will review all documents that cross the Resolute Desk,” Politico added. Well, why just documents? What about every time the President even looks cross-eyed at the football, or heaven forbid, orders it opened?”

“It is unquestionably a court-martial-worthy offense to refuse the President access to the football. The individuals chosen for this job are impeccably vetted for loyalty and sanity up to a special security level called Yankee White. But what if the military officer who carries it insists on telling John Kelly before allowing the President to access its contents? And the President refuses?”

“Clearly, any sentient individual should tuck it under his arm and flee immediately. What court would ever convict him? Still, there is a solution.”

“Congress should, quite simply, write this procedure into law: The bearer of the White House football, or anyone staffing the Situation Room in the White House, must communicate immediately with Kelly, national security adviser H.R. McMaster or Defense Secretary Jim Mattis at any moment Trump might order the football be opened.”

“There is already a bipartisan stamp on a legislative curb to one potentially volatile international action the President might be inclined to take — lifting, at his own discretion, sanctions on Russia. That measure passed both houses by overwhelming, veto-proof majorities, effectively compelling the President to sign it. A football bill should have equally overwhelming support.”

“A decade ago, Vice President Dick Cheney warned ABC News that the President (George W. Bush) “could launch the kind of devastating attack the world has never seen. He doesn’t have to check with anybody. He doesn’t have to call the Congress; he doesn’t have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in. It’s unfortunate, but I think we’re perfectly appropriate to take the steps we have.”

What we really need, a decade and a far different administration later, is to take new steps to assure the American people, and the world, that they will not be held hostage by an individual in the grip of some personal or self-generated emotional crisis.”